Ticking Away
by Mindrider
Summary: The end of the war is nearing and the demigods are stuck on the losing side. When Gaea traps Percy and Annabeth underground, will they be able to break free and destroy her? Or will they be killed before they can even try?


The funny thing about being on the verge of death, is that you start to remember the little things that make life so damn precious.

The funny thing about being a _demigod_ on the verge of death, is that those little things tend to be dying right there with you.

I couldn't see her very well, not through the screen of blood that pulled a burgundy curtain over my eyes like a red tinged blindfold. I couldn't hear her very well either. Not over the sounds of the roots slithering across the dry dirt, hissing at us venomously and occasionally nipping at our ripped jeans and exposed ankles. I could feel the thicker roots churning against my forehead and my chest. They writhed like animals, burrowing into my skin like it was the earth, causing blood to trickle in their tracks. They were my bonds. They were my handcuffs. They were what kept me away from Annabeth.

Senses of neither sight nor sound were necessary for me to feel comforted by her company. I could feel her fleeting heartbeat through the ground. I could sense her presence in the cell that was to become our grave, and I could taste her anticipation through the bleak air that was as dry as our thirsty tongues. We were about to die.

Just like that.

After all of those years of fighting side by side, defending each other like we'd been born as forcible counterparts. After every quest we'd journeyed together; all of the puzzles we'd solved with a combination of strategic tactics and resilient power. Annabeth and I were two hands of the same clock rotating around each other, unable to lead ourselves astray because of the sheer force of our compliment. But now the clock was falling off the wall and neither Annabeth nor I could save each other from our shocking, shattering fate.

The roots squeezed us tighter, screeching as they grinded against each other like churning gears. For a moment I heard her breath catch in her throat, and my heart began to pound. Was that it? Was that the last sound that I would ever hear her make? My pulse would stop momentarily. But then I would feel her life through the deadness of the air and I would breathe a sigh of misplaced relief because I knew that I had longer. I had a few more precious seconds to come up with a plan.

"I didn't think she would do it," a creaking voice sighed from behind the aggregation of roots.

I swallowed nonexistent saliva. "I know. I never thought that Gaea would win." My voice was weak.

A few moments later and I heard labored breathing from a few feet away. Annabeth was struggling against the tree. For a split second I almost believed she had escaped, but an enraged shout pierced through the room as the roots tightened and pulled Annabeth back into their unyielding grasp.

"_No!_" she yelled, her voice so close to being completely drained. "Gaea _can't win_! She can't kill us in some stupid underground tomb, and then take over the world!" Her voice faltered when she finished, "I won't let her."

I grimaced as the bonds on my wrists tightened. "Not to be pessimistic or anything, but this stupid stick is digging so far into my stomach I can feel it in my back. Plus I've got another one embedded in my forehead."

"I can see it. Looks painful."

"Thanks for the sympathy."

The tree we were leaning against decided to tighten its grasp and Annabeth and I both groaned.

"We're gonna die," she moaned in a strained voice I didn't recognize.

"Probably," I agreed. "And Gaea's gonna rise, and the camps are gonna fall, and everyone we love is going to die a painful death, but at least we have this cozy little room where we can be constricted to death."

"_Optimism_, Percy."

"It's called _realism_."

Annabeth snorted.

"And, anyway," I said, "what do you think will happen when we're dead?"

"I think you've outlined the main points pretty accurately: Gaea will rise, the camps will fall, everyone we love will-"

"I meant, immediately after we die," I interrupted. "Do you think these things will stop constricting us, or do you think we'll be squeezed into little Percy and Annabeth slices?"

"Percy that's disgusting."

"We might even be bite sized."

"Percy that might be _genius_."

I blinked a couple of times, and the blood finally cleared away from my eyes. I could see Annabeth out of the corner of my eye, her face glistening with sweat, but, for some reason lit up with a hopeful smile.

"What?" I asked her. "What did I say?"

"I think you came up with a plan."

"I did?"

"Shh!" she said harshly. "Stop talking. Stop moving. We're going to stay completely still and then we'll play-" Her words suddenly stopped.

"Annabeth!"

My eyes spun sideways and saw her face looking ashen, her grey eyes wide like saucers. Her mouth was wide open and she was gasping for air, her chest heaving angrily when it didn't receive what it demanded. This was the end. She was going to be killed before she could finish explaining our getaway plan. She managed to croak out one last word. I expected it to be something romantic like '_love' _or my name, but instead it was a word that didn't lighten the situation much.

"_Dead_," she croaked in a whisper before collapsing against the trunk of the tree.

My eyes couldn't see what was going on. My mind couldn't process what she had said, or what had happened. My own lungs couldn't find air. Her last word rung in my ears like a church bell, over, and over, and over, until I understood.

I watched her left eye wink at me before collapsing against the trunk as well, allowing my eyes to close and my hands to unclench. I wanted to fight the tree or at least fight for air, but I knew that I couldn't defy Annabeth's final demand. I couldn't ruin the last chance that we had at surviving to see another sunrise. I did what she said.

I played dead.

For the longest time I didn't think that it was working. The roots still constricted me, pulling me towards the trunk of the tree – the heart of Gaea's existence. I could feel the life trickling out my open mouth like gasoline from a car. My insides burned like the fire water I drank in Tartarus. Warm blood washed over my eyelids again and a piercing pain shot through my forehead where the branch was finishing its job. I was dying and the love of my life was dying beside me.

That is, if she wasn't already dead.

I couldn't tell. The life in the cell was overpowering the death. I could feel the tree getting stronger as Gaea absorbed our life forces and used us to fortify, used us to _rise_. For the longest time I was embracing the death with the acceptance that there was nothing I could do. Gaea was expending my energy like a parasite. Her tree was a battery and Annabeth and I were the charge. It needed us in the same way that we needed each other. The only difference was that, while Annabeth and I could survive with only each other for comfort, the tree needed a constant supply something more than our energy.

As the roots began to loosen and the pain that had been crushing my body subsided, I forced myself to stay completely still, to not allow this glimmer of hope to cause me to move and ruin our perfect plan. Instead, I searched in the soil blindly, reaching out for any touch of the tree's life force. A cup. A tablespoon. A drop. I closed in on a decent supply a couple hundred feet down, where the roots connected with the beginnings of the entrance to Tatarus.

I had to work up the energy.

This had to be big.

This had to be _big_.

But my pulse was slowing, and I could feel it. The time between each tick of the clock increasing with every second. My red tinted eyelids began to turn dark at the edges, a black, that was deeper than night, filling me from the inside. I couldn't feel my body anymore, only the dirt and the hope that sat a few hundred feet below. I was beginning to lose touch with that too as my memories became a blur and images of familiar faces swirled like paints in front of my eyes. I was going. I was dying. I was practically dead – and then I felt the ticking.

It was the other hand of the clock, spurring to life, sending vibrations through the ground that yanked me upwards. I wanted to look at her and make sure that that was _her_ heart, and that I was fighting for a real cause. But if I moved then the roots would only tighten their grip, and this time they would be thorough.

So instead I immersed myself in that hope, and I wrenched it away from where it resided far below. I felt the tug, and the tree felt it too, for it jolted upwards suddenly, as if in surprise, before the torrent of water erupted from its trunk. My pulse roared to life and soon I wasn't controlling the water, I was the _embodiment _of the water, eating away at Gaea from the inside. I could feel her thrashing, hear her roaring, but I had won. The waterlogged tree began to wither until it was the color of the mud that it laid in. Its skin was soggy like damp paper, and wrinkled. I threw one last lash of water at the center of the trunk, laughing as it split in two – right down the middle. Gaea was gone. But something was missing. For some reason the faint ticking of the other hand of the clock had gone silent.

Annabeth's hair spread around her face like the rays of the sun. She was floating in about a foot of water, her eyes sealed shut, her muscles slack. She was moving away from me, towards the dead tree, towards Gaea's corpse. I caught her wrist before she could create a pile of corpses. Her pulse was nonexistent, and her skin was as pale as snow, with hint of blue touching her lips. I brought my head close to her mouth to find no stream of air. Her chest was still. I slapped her face, partly out of desperation, partly out of anger.

_Gaea won't take her away from me. Not after I won_.

But the goddess's evils outlasted her life. She had taken Annabeth's energy with her.

My whirling mind was a fog obscuring any sense I still had. I should be doing something. I should be trying to revive her, but I couldn't remember how. Do I start with compressions or breaths? Should I tilt her head forward or backward? Would compressions even work if she was floating?

I eventually decided to forgo the compressions, and I tilted her head upwards before bringing my mouth to hers.

I had kissed Annabeth many times before, but this felt different. Her lips were cold and lifeless. Her cheeks were sunken beneath her sharp cheekbones, the contrast suddenly startling. Her heart was unresponsive, so I tried again, breathing as heavily as my fatigued lungs would allow. Her eyes were sealed. Shut. Closed. And then they were open.

The water came out of her mouth in recurring, painful jolts. Her entire body was heaving with the effort, her hands clutching at her throat and chest for dear life. When the water stopped trickling down her lips and the tears started trickling down her cheeks, I pulled her into an embrace, feeling her heartbeat shudder through her like shocks. Hot tears burned my collarbone, and blonde hair got tangled in my fingers, but I didn't care.

She was alive.

Gaea was gone.

_She_ was _alive_.

She was looking at me too, peering up with inquisitive eyes. Her breathing had slowed down to normal, as well as mine.

"That was close," she said after a moment of silent eye contact.

"I'll say."

We both laughed a little, and she melted into my arms, burrowing into my chest.

"We almost died, Percy."

"I know."

"You saved us."

I grinned. "I did."

She sat up and inspected my scratched face, running her hand beneath the raw scar on my forehead. I couldn't have looked any better than she did. Her face was scraped up pretty bad, and her skin was still pale as a ghost's. Her hair was wet a mess of twigs and mud and blood, but it didn't matter. We were alive, and Gaea wasn't. We had surpassed our expected lifespan once again.

So I touched my fingers to her neck, holding them there until I felt the clock ticking between us, synchronized. I ignored the branches that floated past us in the pool of muddy water and I ignored the bruises on my ribs and the cuts on my face, and brought her lips to mine, allowing her warmth to be that firm reassurance that she was alive and she was _mine_.

Annabeth was one of the little things that made life so damn precious.


End file.
